| Amanda Hicken 
The countdown continues! As the year comes to a close, we’re compiling the best practices you need to know for 2016. Get more tips in our Best of 2015 series. Visuals are no longer a nice-to-have in your content marketing; 2015 was the year that solidified them as must-haves. Including graphics, photos, video and other multimedia in your content helps amplify the overall impact of your message – increasing attention, exposure, and conversations, and providing authority to your written words. Keep reading for some of our top blog posts, white papers, and other content about visual storytelling from the past year. How to Map Out a Visual Storytelling Strategy Worth Savoring “Pretty” visuals will only get your marketing so far. Although it’s important to create graphics and videos that will catch and hold onto your audience’s attention, there must be a strategy at the heart of it all. This blog post deconstructs OpenTable’s fantastic #SavorTheRoad campaign and shares takeaways to use in your own visual storytelling strategy. Setting the Record Straight: Press Releases that Stand Out in the Digital Age Incorporating even simple multimedia components into your press releases can make a dramatic difference in terms of their effectiveness. The key is knowing which ones to include to reach your particular audience. Download this white paper for multimedia, formatting and distribution tips you can use to boost your press release’s impact. DIY Design: 7 Effective Graphics Any Marketer Can Create Despite multimedia’s many benefits, some brands are still hesitant to tackle a visual storytelling strategy, citing lack of resources and time. The reality, though, is that effective graphics aren't that difficult to produce. Here are 7 graphic styles that are easy to create — even if you aren't a designer. The next time you need a visual on the fly, try one of them out. 14 Tools for Creating Visuals If cost is the hurdle holding your visual strategy back, we have you covered as well. This list of great — and free — design tools will help you find, create, edit and optimize visuals for your online content. Incorporating Doodles in Your Content Marketing Strategy Because it’s now so easy and inexpensive to create visuals (see the two articles listed above!), brands need to start exploring how unusual visual formats can augment their strategy. Learn why doodles – in all their unsophisticated glory – can provide a very effective contrast to polished imagery. Why Animation Will Make Your Next Video Awesome Everyone wants a video that will leave their audience’s jaws hanging — something beautiful that impresses and inspires. Check out this blog post to discover how animation can help your brand visually demonstrate anything that's too difficult or down-right impossible to achieve in reality. Content We Love: IBM Promotes Millennial Research with Memes Earlier this year, IBM released a study about the real story behind millennials in the workplace. There are a lot of reasons this multimedia news release ranks as one of our favorite ‘Content We Love’ examples; however, the announcement’s most stand-out element is the use of memes throughout the text to illustrate IBM’s key research findings. Knowing how to effectively engage millennials is a key differentiator for companies hoping to attract the best upcoming talent, and memes are a great way to do so. Improve Your Visual Storytelling, One Step at a Time Even if your brand is already using infographics, photos, and video in your content marketing, there’s always room to grow. The following graphic shows the different stages of the visual storytelling spectrum, and its companion blog post offers a step-by-step process to take your strategy to the next level. Check it out, then come back next week for part four in our ‘Best of 2015’ series. 
Amanda Hicken is PR Newswire's senior manager of strategic content and managing editor of Beyond PR. Follow her on Twitter @ADHicken for tweets about the media, marketing, Cleveland, and comic books. | 
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